The Unfeigned Faith; Stir Up the Gift of God (2 Timothy 1:5–6)

2 Tim. 1:5. Having received a reminder of the sincere faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also.

By expressing his love for Timothy, the holy Paul at the same time renewed Timothy’s love for himself; and having thus warmed his heart, made it ready to receive instruction, as warmed wax is ready to receive an imprint of a seal. He now prepares his hand to receive this instruction, reviving the strength of his faith by reminding him of it—as it is in him and in his lineage.

“Mindful,” he said, “of your tears”—I desire to see you still and I pray for it. Yet tears are a natural thing; and everything natural in spiritual relationships loses its force if it is not hallowed by faith, and only this hallowing clothes it with a certain conditional significance. Therefore the Apostle immediately adds: “having received a reminder of the sincere faith that is in you.” “Not for your tears alone (do I desire to see you), but also for your faith, since you are a servant of truth, and there is no hypocrisy in you” (holy Chrysostom). “And what gladdens me above all is the sincerity of your faith” (blessed Theodoret). The preceding words had awakened in the soul of the holy Timothy feelings and dispositions natural to those who have long lived together and become akin; the reminder of faith gives them a different tone and transfers them to a different sphere—detached, sober; and the praise of his faith as sincere and without pretense could not but revive his zeal for the faith, from the desire to hold himself to be precisely the person who had been praised.

In order to bring this zeal to an even higher pitch, the Apostle reminds him of the faith of Timothy’s lineage. In you, he says, dwells the faith “which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice.” “You, he says, come from a house that has served Christ from long ago. You have had this blessing from of old; from your forebears you received the sincere faith” (holy Chrysostom). The reminder of the spirit and character of one’s lineage naturally disposes kinsmen to maintain that spirit and character—and this is what the Apostle had in view in speaking thus. “By honorable mention of the ancestors he strengthens the faith in his disciple” (blessed Theodoret). Since “the virtues of ancestors belong to us too if we imitate them, but if we do not imitate them, they have no force for us and indeed serve only for our condemnation” (holy Chrysostom)—the fear of falling behind one’s lineage and bringing shame upon it naturally stirred in the holy Timothy a zeal for its virtue, that is, faith; especially when such persons are held up as grandmother and mother, whose very name, when heard, warms the heart. If in general “nothing is so effective as a domestic example” (blessed Theodoret), the example of a grandmother and mother acts the more powerfully, the more tenderly it draws.

“And I am persuaded is in you also.” You too have not fallen behind them; faith settled in you long ago. “I am persuaded,” πεπεισμαι — “I do not merely conjecture, but am convinced and fully assured” (holy Chrysostom). A new incentive to be zealous in faith. For it followed that if, after this, you should grow slack in that zeal, you would be going against yourself—you would be a traitor to yourself. The Apostle mentioned his own forebears above, and now mentions the forebears of the holy Timothy, in order to suggest: our root has been hallowed by faith; it behoves us, therefore, drawing wholesome sap from that root, to blossom in keeping with the character of that sap. Or perhaps his words carry the same force as these words in the mouths of soldiers: you and I are old campaigners together.

2 Tim. 1:6. For this reason I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.

Having so prepared the holy Timothy, the holy Paul now with full confidence enjoins him to perform zealously the task laid upon him—the task to which he was called by ordination—the task of pastoral ministry or apostolic succession. The active fulfilment of this the Apostle called the stirring up of the gift of God, which began to live in him by virtue of ordination. Pastoral ministry or apostolic succession is not a matter of external appointment, as is the case with civil offices, but is the result of an interior gracious making into a pastor, by virtue of which the one chosen becomes capable of pastoral ministry and is sealed as a pastor—so that whether he fulfils his duty or not, he is still a pastor, by the gift of grace living in him. He who fulfils the work of pastoral ministry as he ought stirs up and fans that gift; he who does not fulfil it quenches it. The same thing occurs here as with those who, in the parable, received talents: one puts the talent received into circulation, another buries it in the ground. Both expressions in the parable mean the same thing: it is not enough to receive the gift of grace; one must also stir it up, or develop it—by laboring in the doing of the work for which it was given. The Apostle expressed this by the word αναζωπυρειν — to fan, to give sufficient ventilation, to provide a current of air so that the fire does not go out but blazes more and more. What a current of air is to fire, that are the labors according to the gift of grace to that gift. This is what the Apostle reminds the holy Timothy of when he says: “for this reason I remind you to stir up the gift of God.” But for what reason? For the sake of the faith that lives in him and his lineage. That faith obliges him to stir up the gift of God. By faith the gift was given, by faith received; but faith also presents the most powerful incentives to zealous activity according to the gift. The Apostle speaks as if to say: since I have revived the faith in you by the preceding remembrances, I have no need to persuade you at length—it is enough merely to remind you to stir up your gift. But one may also understand additionally: since you believe sincerely, for that very reason be the more earnestly diligent in stirring up your gift; take care not to grow negligent—to have faith and yet not to stir up the gift is an inconceivable inconsistency. Holy Chrysostom says: “I know that you have sincere faith, and therefore I remind you: it is necessary to have zeal in order to stir up the gift of God. As fire needs wood, so grace needs our diligence in order to be kindled. ‘The gift of God’—that is, the grace of the Spirit, which you received for the leadership of the Church, for signs, and for every ministry. ‘To stir up’—for it depends on us both to quench and to kindle it. Therefore in another place he says: ‘Do not quench the Spirit’ (1 Thess. 5:19). Through carelessness and sloth it is quenched; through attentiveness and diligence it is kindled.”

c) Outline of the Epistle

The Epistle has two parts: the first, the larger and the more important, is instructional for the holy Timothy (1:7 – 4:8); the second, the smaller, is of the nature of a postscript and addendum, bearing on the personal circumstances of the holy Paul (4:9–22). One may, however, suppose that for the Apostle, who had been abandoned by almost everyone, the chief need was to summon the holy Timothy to himself—for which purpose it was necessary to explain also his own situation. But since he did not know for certain whether he would remain alive until Timothy’s arrival, he writes him these instructions on pastoral ministry as a supplement to those given in the First Epistle. He might have conveyed these instructions to the holy Timothy in person upon his arrival; but since he could not say with certainty that he would still be alive to greet him, he thought it right to include them in the Epistle. Thus, for the holy Timothy and for us, the first—the instructional—part stands as the most important. With it we shall confine our outline of the Epistle, calling the last, the circumstantial part, the Postscript.

Within this principal part two sections may be distinguished: A) In the first, the pastoral activity itself is spoken of. This is the properly instructional section (1:7 – 3:9). — B) In the second, the holy Timothy is encouraged to carry it out as he ought, in all its aspects (3:10 – 4:8). This is the encouraging section. Both sections, in their respective parts, correspond to one another.